(vi) Further bending of reliable sources.

1. In 1985 Irving wrote to a Munich newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, claiming that the police chief responsible for the 'Final Report' had the 'most reason to minimise the losses', because he was the person with air-raid protection. Irving was implying therefore that the figure of 18,375 given in the 'Final Report' was a politically-motivated underestimate.182 Yet Irving is quite happy in other places to accept the authenticity of police statistics on air-raid losses. As he himself commented with regard to the October 1943 attack on Kassel, the Germans '...kept records of all air raid losses with meticulous care - even those on livestock.'183 After the September 1944 raid on Darmstadt he wrote in the 1995 edition of the Dresden book: 'Once again the police chief's post-raid report provides the best documentary description of the attack.'184 Irving, indeed, quoted the 'Final Report' no less than eighteen times in 1995. Why therefore should it be unreliable? Moreover TB 47 itself had also been signed by the police chief for Dresden. Yet for a long time Irving had accepted the figure of 250,000 given in the forged version of the document as entirely plausible. Here is yet another example of the double standard Irving applies in the evaluation of evidence which suits his case, and evidence which does not.